Of Glasses and Spectacles
by Lethe Laguz
Summary: SPOILERS FOR JFA Penny idolizes Adrian Andrews, but the woman might have more to her than she appears. AdrianPenny gen fluff. No pairings. Second chapter up. Critique and comments muchly appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Of Glasses and Spectacles **Characters:** Penny, Adrian, and mentions of other 1-3 and 2-4 characters **Pairings:** No romance, but platonic Penny+Adrian fluff **Summary:** While working at Global Studios, Penny meets Matt Engarde's new manager. Penny admires Adrian's cool nature, while Adrian tries to use Penny as a distraction from the demons haunting her. But what happens when Penny becomes dangerously close to discovering Adrian's insecurities? **Warnings:** Major spoilers for case 2-4 and minor spoilers for case 1-3 **Disclaimer:** I own Adrian and she's currently tied up in my closet. …. Okay, don't own it ; **Author's Notes: **Inspired by this piece of art: I've started to love these two I don't even know why ; Special thanks to the wonderful people on CR for their ideas and encouragement for this. YOU GUYS KNOW WHO YOU ARE 3 EDIT: first chapter revised. New chapter updates soon, promise ; 

_Chapter 1: Meeting_   
A dry summer breeze wafted through the employee area of Global Studios. The studios had been in a constant rush ever since the events of State vs. Powers, and that day was no different. With the successful closing of the Pink Princess, the studio was putting its energy into the new show being currently planned, the Nickel Samurai. Employees had been being laid off ever since the murder and new people were constantly rushing in, but being a quiet, off-to-the-side sort of girl, Penny managed to escape notice and keep her job without much fuss. The new faces, new actors, new ideas flooding through the studio were almost suffocating, enough to keep a girl like Penny's head swimming as she got lost in the crowd. She didn't really mind. Being surrounded by people planning a new Samurai show kept her overwhelmingly giddy with fangirlish glee, though she managed to keep her excitement inside and act as the behind-the-scenes quiet face of normality in the sea of exotic stars and bigwigs.   
The security lady, Ms. Oldbag, had been fired, which was neither a surprise nor a disappointment really, though Penny could relate to her as a fan and it was kind of a shame that she got laid off for telling the truth in a murder trial. More importantly, Will Powers hadn't gotten a part in the newest show. Penny knew how much the show meant to him and missed having him around to cheer up the studio members—he wasn't much to look at, but that wasn't really important considering his kind smile and gentle nature.   
With her clumsy hands, Penny hadn't been of much use, but she wasn't a bad cook and so the studio kept her around. She tended to the T-bone steaks currently grilling and perked her ears for any new information or gossip—not that she's into that sort of thing, of course, she's not that type of girl…she just likes knowing what's going on—being friendly to the people who come by for lunch but not striking up a conversation or sticking out. The people at global studios were mostly either intimidating or just plain odd, especially now that Will wasn't around anymore. She watched his new show, although seeing him wearing a rabbit mask was both out of place and somehow fitting at the same time.   
A woman brushed up to the grill, and though Penny had had no desire to speak with most of the people who had come up so far, she felt the need to talk to this woman, partly because Penny had never seen her around before and partly because she had this air of certainty and calm strength about her, with not a blond hair out of place or even a hint of a slouch in her walk. Unlike the other studio members, she also seemed sort of, well, normal, which was sort of refreshing.   
"Er…have I seen you before?" Penny asked dumbly, suddenly conscious of the way her large, thick-rimmed glasses covered her face in comparison to the woman's understated spectacles.   
"Most likely not, I was just recently assigned here. I'm Matt Engarde's new manager," the woman said, but her voice had a sort of 'I don't care' tone that said that she was really only answering out of formality with no real sense of _why _she was bothering with divulging information to such a person.   
"…Are you going to serve me or not?" Penny jumped at the woman's voice, realizing with a heated face that she had been rudely staring and thinking and forgetting that her role was merely to serve food and duct tape props together.   
"O-of course…" Penny set about to the task, and as she did the woman's words set in. "Oh, you're the Nickel Samurai's new manager?" She didn't really succeed in masking her fan's excitement at meeting yet another important person to the new show, though she tried, and the woman seemed to look around the room a bit, eyes a bit wide and resting on various people. It made Penny a bit nervous—what was she doing? Was she annoyed at Penny's belated reaction? Was she looking for an escape from talking to such an ordinary person?   
Finally, the manager turned her head back to Penny. "…Yes, I am." She turned her head to the side again and started fiddling with a card in her hand.   
"O-oh. I'm an assistant here…" Penny berated herself for stating the obvious—assistants were the only ones who bothered with the mundane job of cooking food. "I'm Penny Nichols."   
Penny now noticed that the woman was holding a small pink book in her hands, which she seemed to be gripping a bit hard because her knuckles were turning white. Perhaps, Penny thought with a slight flush, because such a person as her was even bothering to introduce herself to such an obviously important and cool person, but the woman forced a tiny smirk and answered "…Adrian Andrews." before taking her steak and striding briskly away.   
Penny continued her job, although despite the conversation's ordinariness she couldn't seem to get the brief encounter out of her mind for the rest of the afternoon.   
-----------------   
Penny tried to talk to Adrian as much as possible during the lunch breaks for the next few weeks. Everything, from the woman's appearance to her small mannerisms, seemed to contain an air of promising mystery. Penny tried to piece together little bits of information she got from Adrian, although it was hopeless as not only was the puzzle missing too many pieces, but putting the pieces together seemed to do nothing to tell her _why _the pieces existed in the first place. Putting the puzzle together was meaningless if you couldn't see the picture on the top.   
Penny tried to center the conversation around the manager as much as possible, although whether this was out of fascination of the older woman or whether it was out of embarrassment of her own plainness she couldn't tell or didn't want to admit. Adrian was a very successful manager—that much she could pick up easily from everything the other employees said to each other (not that Penny eavesdropped, of course she wasn't that sort of girl, she was just listening for new news about the Nickel Samurai and accidentally hearing other things, that was all). Penny hadn't gotten close enough in just a few weeks of lunchtime conversations to really get close or personal with the busy woman, but as the days went on she dared to hope that their conversations were going well. Her fears about annoying Adrian were alleviated a bit as the older woman continued to chat with her, sometimes even asking her a question or two about herself—somewhere in the back of her mind she noticed that the questions mirrored her own _Do you enjoy being a manager, Ms. Andrews? Do you enjoy being an assistant, Miss Nichols?_—and her worrying was also lessened when she noticed Adrian's familiar averting of her gaze and fiddling with objects when she talked to other people as well as Penny. Perhaps those were just things Adrian did. Perhaps being such a successful person, she considered many other people beneath her and so she did those things, or perhaps Penny was completely wrong and there was another reason…perhaps she just wasn't comfortable talking to people? But Penny only thought of such a suggestion in the corner of her mind, as it didn't fit with the other puzzle pieces of information she'd learned of the woman so far.   
As days passed, Penny found herself copying Adrian's mannerisms, as if clutching a book to her chest, standing up straight, tilting her head when she smiled could make her as successful as Adrian. As if showing her surprise with a hand to her chest and forming a little 'o' with her mouth could turn her into somebody besides Penny so that she could be an interesting person, the kind that you would expect to be talking to such a person as Adrian Andrews. 

Adrian didn't really mind talking to Penny, as having a nice, normal girl to talk to was nice when she was surrounded by those slime ball men and their idiotic rivalry, although it was sort of odd how Penny often stammered or flushed while talking to her. It made Adrian sort of nervous—she was never sure whether she was saying the right thing or not, and Penny wasn't the type of person she was used to talking to. It irritated her how she often slipped up, taking a while to answer or saying the wrong thing—she thought she had gotten past that, but she always reverted to it when talking to the young woman. They didn't really talk at length—Adrian was not one for close relationships of any kind, even friendships—but they engaged in idle chatter a few minutes a day, which Adrian wasn't quite sure why she enjoyed considering the trivialness. _Yes, Penny, I work for Matt Engarde, yes, Penny, I enjoy it, yes, Penny, he's nice to manage_. She forced out the kind words about her hated enemy, the rat, with a fake smile, though she started fiddling with the card in her hand faster.   
As days passed, Adrian noticed something that cast a shadow over her heart. When she was talking to Penny, just for an instant, like a shimmering mirage, a familiar face would be cast over the girl's. The way she titled her head when she smiled, stood up as straight as possible, clutched a book to her chest, it was exactly like— The next day, Adrian skipped lunch. She was trying to forget that person. That person was gone, and Adrian was not going to revive her memory. She didn't want Celeste to become just another game, just another thought in a person's mind, just another mirage that could never be touched, no matter how many times you reached out.   
The next day, Adrian was nowhere to be found. Penny scanned the busy crowds, waited by her usual perch at the grill—what was with Global Studios and their obsession with T-bone steaks?—but Adrian was gone.   
Suddenly Penny felt more subconscious than ever. How silly and foolish to think that copying the way another person carried herself would turn her into that person! How foolish to think that Adrian wouldn't notice. If there was one thing Penny wanted nobody to know, it was how much of a hopeless fan she was—of kid's shows, of silly games, of people that were more confident and successful than her.   
Penny ditched the little book in her hands and her normal smile returned. 

The next day, Adrian realized that she was being foolish. Escaping ghosts by avoiding her job—how silly! And how trivial. A normal little girl had nothing in common with her mentor. She gathered herself up and strode to lunch.   
There was no longer anything Celesteesque about Penny. So Adrian's mind had been fooling her after all.   
-----------------   
A day or two later, she noticed Penny staring with an odd amount of fervor at the card she was fiddling with considering the girl's usual quiet smile.   
"Er…can I look at that card you're holding?" Penny blurts out finally, gulping and sweating a bit for what reason Adrian can't fathom. Adrian blinked, though the question didn't really come as a surprise.   
"It's nothing, really," she said as she handed it over, looking around a bit for something else to fiddle with, "just one of the new Nickel Samurai trading cards."   
"Nickel Samurai…trading cards…" It's not really a question, and so Adrian doesn't bother answering, though she noted that Penny's voice had gained a higher pitch and she was slouching over the card in a rather unseemly manner, losing the calmness that she usually possessed. Adrian watched with mild amusement as Penny gulped again and straightened up, apparently realizing how she had been behaving, and acted all the world like someone trying to hide something. "I just didn't know there were Nickel Samurai trading cards out…I mean, the show hasn't even been aired yet," Penny explained.   
"Yes, well, these are just the prototypes. I don't really have much to do with the trading cards, I just happened to pick this one up." She didn't really care about a silly piece of pasteboard, although she stifled the urge to admit that it had a nice design.   
Penny looked like she was thinking about something, which was a change, really, as she usually looked a bit…fazed. "Can I keep it?" she blurted out finally. Adrian shouldn't have been startled all things considered, but she sort of was. The conversation had been leading up to this for some time now, after all, but hearing a confession of fandom of a kid's show from a nineteen year old woman seemed a bit…odd, although Adrian had looked at the demographic polls and there _were _fans older than that. She just couldn't herself picture liking such nonsense, or rather, she couldn't picture Celeste liking such nonsense, which was more important. She shoved the thoughts of the older woman out of her mind. She had to not need Celeste anymore—she had to become everything her mentor was, and the one thing that Celeste was NOT was weak. _If only she'd realized that people like her doesn't need people like them, she wouldn't have—_ Adrian still needed Celeste. She was weak, but Celeste was strong, and she tried not to think that if only there weren't people like Celeste for Adrian to need then Adrian wouldn't have to be so weak (_Weak people should be cast aside) _because she knew such things weren't fair or right and Celeste was brilliant, Celeste was necessary, Celeste was strong, Celeste was—   
_Celeste was…_   
"A-actually, n-nevermind, I don't need it!" Penny's rushed, stammery voice, reminded Adrian that rather than answer the girl's question, the thoughts of Celeste had caused her to clench her fist and grit her teeth. What that must have looked like to poor Penny!   
Adrian tried to smile as pleasantly as she could, which felt and probably looked forced but it didn't really matter. "It's fine, you can keep it," _nothing matters anymore _"I don't have any use for it anyway," _weak people should be cast aside _"I apologize, I was…thinking about something else."   
Seeing Penny's gleeful smile in response, hearing her say thank you, thinking about her own chain of thoughts and her forced out smiles and I-don't-care tone of voice made Adrian gasp in realization.   
She'd tried to become like Celeste.   
_Nothing matters_ She'd tried to act strong and assured.   
_Weak people don't matter. _   
She copied her mannerisms and took over her job.   
_Things that don't matter should be_   
She'd gotten close to Celeste's lover, the scumbag.   
_cast aside. _ But she hadn't become Celeste.   
In her mind, Adrian's hands tied a rope around someone's neck. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Penny gasping and reaching for her but it didn't matter because she was falling and clutching and letting go and holding on and letting go again.   
_I'm not Celeste._   
_I'm Matt._


	2. Chapter 2

Notes: This chapter is…pretty random really, and not really a chapter because it's just a randomly cut out segment of what I've written, but it's been months so I figured I have to update with SOMETHING and the rest of what I've written I'm not sure I'm keeping. If that…made sense .;

Right-o. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to everyone who critiqued on the CR board, it was extremely appreciated. And sorry to my betas for not getting this to them before uploading it, but as said it's been far too long a wait for an update .;

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Penny gasped as Adrian's face went stark white and her knees started shaking. "Ms. Andrews…?" she asked tentatively, and then "Ms. Andrews!" as the older woman collapsed. Penny rushed to make sure the manager didn't get a face full of asphalt. Murmurs grew as a small crowd started forming around them. The majority didn't notice.

Penny tried to ignore the excitement and nervousness that rose in her stomach at the fact that a group of important people who normally wouldn't give her the time of day were crowding around her and instead focused on Adrian. The woman's hand clutched Penny's shoulder—Penny could feel the way it shook. As a few people began to swarm around, question Adrian, the hand began clutching at the fabric of Penny's turtleneck. The assistant steadied Adrian as she took a few breaths and straightened. She adjusted her spectacles.

"I apologize, the heat must have gotten to me." Penny studied the older woman's face. She had placed her usual 'oh, whatever' smirk on and her posture was straight, but right now her usual mannerisms seemed fake, as if she was putting on a mask but was missing half of its parts. Underneath her confident eyebrow, her eyes looked like a churning, frothing ocean, and nest to her straight back her arms shook. She let go of Penny, wavering as she did. Penny reached out to her again but Adrian gave her what could only be described as a glare, albeit a shaky one, and Penny's arm fell to her side. Adrian clutched at her book with a trembling grip.

Half of the crowd lost interest, though a few individuals lingered, asking Adrian generic questions, half out of politeness, half out of a snoopy curiosity. Penny stood rooted to the spot watching Adrian, trying to quell her own desire for a juicy tidbit about Adrian's behavior and instead focus on concern for the woman. Adrian answered the generic questions with equally generic answers—"It was just the heat," "I'm alright now," "No need to trouble yourself"—that eventually drove the rest off until it was only Adrian and Penny standing at the grill, which was now covered in a heap of black crisps that were once steak. With a jump as she smelled the scent of burnt charcoal, Penny turned to the grill and hurriedly tried to clean up the mess.

Adrian lingered.

As soon as the worst of the mess was removed, the assistant turned back to her companion. Adrian's mouth opened and closed several times, as if she wanted to say something but didn't know how to say it, or perhaps wanted to say anything at all but wasn't sure what. "…I'm sorry for troubling you," she said finally.

"Oh, it's no trouble at all! …But are you all right?"

"…Of course I am." It was a blatant lie. Her lips were attaining a pale blue layer and her face was still white. Her entire body trembled. Her normal smirk and posture were now an awful façade. Vaguely, Penny wondered how much of the rest of the time the behaviors that now seemed so cheap were really fake—Adrian usually came off as so put-together. She shoved down the thought. Such a negative worry was the type of thing she normally tried to avoid. Penny took a glance at the greasy spatula in her hand and felt a bit like a trespasser, snooping into the manager's thoughts. Adrian Andrews was not the type of person to hold a spatula. Penny was.

"In any case, you can feel free to keep the card." Penny jumped at Adrian's voice. "…You were interested in it. Are you a Samurai fan?" Penny flushed at the smirk of amusement on Adrian's lips.

"No! Well…sort of…I just pick up bits about it here and there since I'm at the studio so much." Penny's embarrassment increased twentyfold as a betrayingly foolish thought jumped out her lips in a squeaky tone. "…You don't like it?" She immediately got the urge to slap herself. Of _course _someone like Ms. Andrews didn't watch silly children's shows.

Adrian's smirk remained—she'd kept it plastered on her face ever since her…incident. "It's a bit…trite." Penny blushed. She'd expected the manager to think that, but still, hearing it was something else. "And…the acting's bad." Adrian's eyes narrowed as she said it.

Penny's embarrassment turned to confusion. "Eh? I thought the actors were pretty good…" she blinked. Matt Engarde and Juan Corrida, as well as the stars of the previous shows, had always been quite popular and talented in her eyes.

"…They're not to my taste."

The thin line where the manager's full lips had once resided told Penny that it was time to change the subject. In her efforts to do so, she opened and closed her mouth enough times to be mistaken for a mud guppy. Adrian wasn't much more talkative, although she had the grace to keep her mouth closed while she wasn't speaking. But Adrian didn't leave, and that was enough to have Penny desperately grasp at every corner of her mind to try to squeeze any possible bit of conversation out of it. The obvious subject was Adrian's condition, but as worried as Penny was for her—idol? When had she started idolizing the manager?—she couldn't bring herself to ask about it. The possible negative outcomes caught her voice in her throat. When a bit of shame rose at her inability to let her concern overcome her aversion to tragedy, she tried to quell it by thinking through positive, practical scenarios—_Adrian really was just bothered by the heat. It's a warm day. She looks pretty pale and she has a lot of hair so she probably overheats easily. She really will be okay. If I bring it up she'll just get mad_. As she chanted reassurances to herself, her vision grew fuzzy, as if warm gauzy blankets were surrounding her and blocking her off from all negativity. She'd had to learn to do this sort of thing to get over the shock of Jack Hammer's death and still be able to give Maya and Mr. Wright a smile afterward.

Adrian cleared her throat.

Penny jumped, realizing that she had been mumbling to herself. She tried to compose herself and retain her look of "normal young adult assistant." Adrian moved her fingers, as if trying to fiddle with something and forgetting that she no longer had anything in her hand to fiddle with. Penny looked around the employee area.

"Oh…everybody's left." And it was true. While absorbed in her thoughts, Penny hadn't noticed that most of the staff had finished their meals and scurried off to the tasks that awaited them. Being the only assistant on staff that day, Penny was left to deal with cleanup duty—nobody could be bothered to throw away a steak bone when they were producing shows. They both surveyed the trash-ridden tabletops with disapproving eyes.

"They're so messy."

"They're so untidy."

The two blinked and glanced at each other. "Well…I guess it makes sense," Penny said. "I get paid to clean up their messes, after all."

Adrian gave her an odd look. "What do you mean by that?"

"E-eh?" _How am I supposed to explain to someone like you that cleaning up dirty dishes is what I'M here for? _"Well…I'm here to do the little mundane things like cleaning up, so there's no need for them to waste time on it when there are more importantthings to be doing…you know?"

Judging by the disapproving look on Adrian's face, Penny's explanation hadn't been satisfactory. "That's ridiculous. I'd hardly trust someone to keep track of my records and files if they couldn't even clean up a table. I'd expect better of them. More to the point, it doesn't take as much work for them to throw away a steak bone as it does for you to throw away several dozen."

Penny was momentarily silenced by hearing the good sense that she'd always expected someone like the manager to have but had never gotten to hear due to their lack of conversation. Curiosity of what else the manager thought, what other opinions she had, made her ease out of her layers of gauzy safety blankets, just a little.

"…You're right," she said soon after. "Not that it matters, I suppose. I can't exactly go around at lunch with a megaphone shouting 'Throw away your steak bones!'"

"…Of course not." Adrian smirked a bit. "People don't do things if you _tell _them to, least of all the people at this studio. That's why if you want them to do something for you, you have to ask them by example."

"Example…?"

"Of course. It's very basic. People are no better than sheep in their ability to ignore what others around them are doing. There's a story—have you heard it? A man brutally murdered another person in the middle of a crowded street in a large city in broad daylight." Penny gasped—how utterly reckless could one be?

"So of course, he was arrested right away?"

A weary little smirk answered. "…No. Every member of the crowd, before stepping up to stop the murder, looked around to see what all the rest were doing. Since nobody was acting, they all just ignored the whole scene and went on their way."

Penny stood, dumbfounded. "Well, I know people follow other's examples, but…" With an embarrassed turn of her head, she remembered her own copying of Adrian just a few days back. "But to ignore a murder happening right under your nose? That's crazy!"

Adrian's face had gained a bit of color and relaxed somewhat throughout their conversation. Penny didn't know why, as it hadn't been a very important conversation, although she subconsciously noticed that Adrian had jumped at the chance to have a reason to stay and talk to Penny rather than going and tending to her duties…perhaps Adrian had really been alright after all? But at Penny's last sentence, it all disappeared. The color drained right out, and Adrian's face and hands clenched, although something in her eyes didn't match up with her angered appearance—they seemed softer, like a puppy begging for a treat from its owner. Adrian peered around as if to make sure that they were really alone, and then her voice came out in a quaky hiss.

"'Crazy?'" Her hands schook. "Crazy? Yes. People often do crazy things. 'Ignoring a murder?' It's not such an unlikely thing." With a sheepish scratch of her arm, Penny remembered how quick she had been to try to forget the chaos of a few months ago—it was a murder, for god's sakes, it wasn't the Evil Magistrate that had died, it was Jack Hammer!—but she turned her full attention back to Adrian at the woman's next words. "People are quick to trust, and quick to avert their eyes from tragedy. They don't really care about the person who's dead, or the people that person left behind, they only care about how it affects them and the reminder of their own mortality. That story I just told you? No surprise. People are sheep. Mindless, spineless things, only living to follow a corrupt leader who they put their idiotic faith in."

Penny gaped. Never in a million years had she expected such a venomous outburst from Adrian Andrews. She wasn't even sure where any of what Adrian had said had come from—it all seemed so much like a non sequiter—but even more, she was surprised at how passionately angry the woman's trembling voice was, and surprised that she was the person to witness it. And as soon as it had started, it suddenly collapsed, Adrian's fists unclenched and flew to clutch at her own shoulders. She backed up and trembled violently, her eyes like water underneath her crooked glasses.

Penny almost could have sworn she heard the words "_I'm a fool..." _whispered to the asphalt, and the words died in the dry wind.


End file.
